Solvei Hawthorne
Solvei Viridian Hawthorne 'is one of the two main protagonists of Stitches + Fists. She is the leader of gang and married to Zander Baker. Their children are Damien Baker and Ignatius Baker. She is known for being headstrong and ambitious, but rather impulsive. She suffers from bipolar disorder--which is not well understood at the time--and has been incarcerated at a mental ward many times as a result. 'Biography + Timeline Solvei was born in 1929 in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother, Matilda, is of Swedish descent and her father, Rey, was born and raised in a small city in Mexico. The two of them fought alongside in World War I as young adults before eventually marrying. When Solvei was four years old, Matilda gave birth to a second child named Arrow. However, in 1935 at the age of two, Arrow drowned during a family outing. His death had a severe impact on the functioning of the family; Matilda and Rey became quite emotionally withdrawn towards Solvei, and she believes for many years that her parents blame her for her brother's death. To cope with the loss of their child, Matilda and Rey illegally and covertly adopted Blythe. Until Blythe is eventually reclaimed by her original family, Solvei believes her to be her biological sibling. From an early age, Solvei's life is punctuated by a longing for power and control. Though it is unclear exactly what her goal is, she is very driven to achieve it and feels that she must use her relationships in some way to get her what she wants. Not long after Arrow's death, Solvei met Zander(his father, Orion, is a subordinate of Rey's) who also recently experienced a traumatic upheaval of his normal family life. He is still recovering from severe facial injuries when the two of them first became acquainted. Solvei is drawn to Zander's intelligence and is enticed by his standoffishness, and became determined to befriend him, though the two of them were less than amenable for many years--Zander avoided her attention and she tried to draw him out by ridiculing him or trying to touch his injuries. Eventually, he begrudgingly accepted her company and the two of them slowly grew closer. Both of them were close to Xion, the son of another one of Rey's subordinates (who is also Orion's close friend and lives in the same apartment building) John. This initially created a lot of the conflict between Zander and Solvei, as each of them felt that Xion's loyalty should be to them. Solvei and Zander's bond strengthened in their adolescence. Zander agreed to help her achieve her goal, whatever it may be. Solvei began to spend a lot of time at Orion and Zander's apartment, and eventually, the two begin to confide in each other during the night when Solvei stays over. Solvei shares the story of her brother and her resulting phobia of water, along with her insecurities and fear that her parents prefer Blythe over her and blame her for Arrow's death. By the time they are 15-16, they consider each other to be best friends and spend much of their time together. As she gets older, Solvei has increasingly frequent emotional outbursts and phases of catatonia. in 1945, Blythe reconnects with her biological family, which happens to be a major crime family, and leaves the Hawthorne household. Solvei, distraught by this turn of events and the fact that Blythe is not really her sister, sets a fire in her bedroom using a stash of matchbooks that she has been collecting for the past several years and suffers burn wounds over most of her right arm. She runs away, finds Blythe and spends the night with her before returning home the next day. Afterward, she has a depressive episode in which she does not speak for several weeks. Not long after this, Blythe's family's gang kidnaps Xion. Solvei and Zander go after him, and although their parents find them before too long, all three of them end up suffering severe injuries: Xion's kneecaps are broken, Solvei's wrists and left eye are cut, and Zander loses two of his fingers and suffers a deep abdominal wound. They are all taken to a hospital, and Solvei temporarily believes that Zander has died until he asks to see her after he gets out of surgery. It is determined that the vision in Solvei's left eye will not recover, and she is also diagnosed with manic depressive psychosis(the current term for bipolar disorder ). She is sent to the mental health ward for 72 hours for observation and begins taking medication to attempt to regulate her moods, although many of the medications are still experimental and not well researched. When the two of them turn 18, Zander begins college and moves into his own apartment. For a few years, their communication and contact dwindles. Solvei is distraught by this and begins to act more recklessly: she experiments with many illicit substances and often wakes up in places that she doesn't recognize. Following an incident in which she was arrested and taken to the mental ward for several days, she calls Zander in desperation and Zander suggests that she come to live with him for a while. By that time, he has a live-in girlfriend, Clara. Solvei stays with them for several months, and Zander and Clara soon become engaged to be married. However, Zander begins confiding in Solvei that he suspects Clara is cheating on him with an ex-boyfriend. Eventually, Solvei meets and begins dating Caleb. She moves in with him. A few months later, she receives an odd phone call from Zander. She drives to his home and finds him in a semi-conscious state after trying to commit suicide by slashing the veins in his elbows. He is taken to the ICU, and while waiting in the emergency room Solvei calls Caleb and breaks up with him. Several days later, Solvei accompanies Zander home when he is released and tells him that she is going to stay with him. The two of them end up sleeping together. The next day, both are uncertain what this means--Zander is afraid he has taken advantage of her, and Solvei believes he regrets it--before they both confess that they have been romantically interested in each other for some time. They begin officially dating and Solvei moves back in with him. About a year later, in Spring of 1951, Solvei discovers that she is pregnant. Never expecting that she would ever marry or have children, and knowing that her mental illness will complicate her parenting abilities, Solvei is conflicted; Marice encourages her to procure an (illegal) abortion, but knowing that Zander has expressed interest in wanting to become a parent, Solvei decides to have the baby. Not long afterward, Zander proposes to Solvei and the two of them elope in Mexico, in the city where Rey spent his childhood. Soon after, when Solvei expresses her dissatisfaction and fear that she will descend into a domestic life and never be able to achieve her goal of being in power, Zander suggests that they begin an organized crime group with Solvei as the leader. Having just become the owner of a bakery, Zander converts it into a front for drug trafficking/money laundering, and along with Marice, Jake, and Xion, begins to recruit potential members and colleagues. Because she has paused her medication regimen, Solvei spirals into an increasingly unstable manic state during her pregnancy; she stops sleeping regularly and develops a delusion that the baby is a "star" and believes it to be some kind of mystical being composed of light rather than a human child. When Solvei goes into labor, she refuses to go to the hospital and the baby is born at home: it is a boy, and Zander names him Damien Lucifer Baker. Solvei's mania somewhat subsides, though she remains uncertain about her role as a parent. Zander takes on almost all of the parenting responsibilities, and Solvei's attachment to the baby continues to be rather unemotional and distant. Meanwhile, Zander and Solvei continue to establish gang in the organized crime ecosystem and become more and more prevalent. When Damien is around a year old, Solvei decides that they should have another baby, and though Zander is hesitant at first due to the extent of her manic state during her first pregnancy, they start trying to conceive. Solvei soon becomes pregnant, but suffers a miscarriage at the beginning of her second trimester. This is difficult emotionally for both of them, but they keep trying and eventually conceive again. During this pregnancy, Solvei does not have the same kind of continued manic episode as she did with Damien, but has a lot of anxiety that she will miscarry again. She has an incident in which it seems like this fear will come true: she begins bleeding and goes into the hospital, but it turns out to be a fluke. In March of 1954, Solvei and Zander's second son, Ignatius Theodore Baker, is born. They notice the next day that he has odd pigmentary disturbances and syndactyly . About a week later they take the baby to the doctor and discover that he is deaf; his symptoms are congruent with Waardenburg Syndrome, though they do not come upon this definition for many years. Solvei falls into a depressive episode for a while after learning that the baby is deaf. She and Zander begin learning (and teaching Damien) American Sign Language. A few weeks before Ignatius is scheduled to have surgery to correct his syndactyly, Solvei has an intense manic episode and ends up being committed to the mental ward for more than three months, and the surgery is delayed. At some point, an informant sent by the police force infiltrates gang and threatens to call CPS and get Zander and Solvei's children taken away unless they turn themselves in; they end up killing the man before he can continue to blackmail them. Solvei becomes closer to her children in their adolescent years and often treats Damien in particular as a peer, especially during manic episodes. However, they continue to keep gang concealed from them. Damien introduces his parents to Shane in ~1967. A few months later Shane begins staying permanently at the Baker household, after suffering a severe beating from his father, and Zander insists that they take him in. When Damien leaves for college without informing anyone in 1969, (taking with him the letters that Solvei has written him throughout the years) Solvei keeps in contact with him for a few months before refusing to take his calls. Sometime after Damien returns, Zander and Solvei recruit Shane to be a member of gang. When Ignatius decides to become a father at the age of nineteen, Solvei is more supportive than Zander though still apprehensive. She and Zander are 44 years old when Ignatius' first child is born in 1973. In 1976, after Damien is hospitalized, Zander and Solvei must make the decision to give consent for Damien's left leg to be amputated. They debate for several days but decide to sign the paperwork. Solvei and Zander eventually recruit Damien, who has already been working as a journalist, to conceal their involvement in criminal activities via spurious crime reporting. 'Description' Appearance Solvei is of relatively average build, though her weight tends to fluctuate due to the frequent adjustment of the (often experimental) medication she takes for bipolar disorder. She has very straight medium-brown hair that sometimes has an auburn tint to it, which she usually wears shoulder-length but sometimes shorter. Her eye color is very dark brown. She has thick scars on each wrist which are often mistaken to be a result of a suicide attempt. She also has moderate-to-severe burn scars covering most of her right arm and some of her upper back. She is blind in her left eye as has a slight facial scar beneath it as the result of the same injury. She has many tattoos, including a Scorpio and a Pisces constellation above her hips. Personality Solvei is very ambitious, but because her goals are exaggerated and undefined, she is rather aimless and unorganized. Although driven and headstrong, she has a tendency to be impulsive and rarely has any long-term plans. She has a disrespect for authority figures and tends to look down on those who conform to the status quo. She can be very socially outgoing but also has a tendency to become withdrawn sometimes in public. She is often skeptical of others' intentions and mostly believes that everyone is hiding something. Although she is eager to connect with people, she finds it difficult to trust them. In her relationships she can become quite possessive, and is desperate to be noticed appreciated. Because of the situation with Blythe and her parents, she is paranoid of being lied to--she is insistent not to lie to her kids, though she conceals much of her past and the existence of gang from them until they are adults. Because of her bipolar disorder (the rapid-cycling variant), she has frequent bouts of mania and depression. Her mania is more pronounced, which increases her delusions of grandeur and impulsiveness. During a manic episode, she has been known to disappear for days or sometimes weeks at a time, and has a tendency to challenge authority figures which often leads to her arrest and subsequent committal in the mental health ward. During bouts of depression she becomes catatonic and barely functional. Although she has very intense emotional reactions, she can be rather blunt and insensitive and tends to shut down emotionally if she becomes overwhelmed. 'Relationships' Zander Solvei's relationship with Zander is the most significant and in-depth one in her life and has a long and varied history. The first several years after they meet, the two of them are not friendly towards one another--Solvei is rather persistent and manipulative. However, the more time they spend together the more their friendship develops and grows. Solvei is fascinated by Zander's intelligence and frustrated by his stoicism and tendency to be withdrawn, and frequently attempts to get him to be more outgoing and open. She tries for many years to get him to tell her what caused his facial scars, which he only does twelve years later before he moves out of his father's apartment. The two of them develop an intense bond in their adolescence after Solvei begins spending the night at the apartment--both of them have lingering fears and insecurities following the events of their childhood, and during the night they confide in each other. Zander adopts a role of protector over Solvei, and offers a sense of stability and safety that she is unable to find elsewhere. He also indulges her delusions of grandeur in ways that no one else does. When they are fifteen, Zander gives Solvei his mother's engagement ring. During moments of emotional fragility they sometimes kiss, but both consider themselves to be platonic friends until many years later. After Zander moves out and starts college, Solvei feels somewhat abandoned and is distressed that their relationship cannot carry on in the current fashion. They see each other infrequently and Solvei struggles with how to feel valued and safe without Zander's assurance; she is afraid that their friendship was in some way artificial and that he wants nothing more to do with her. During the time that she stays with Zander and his then-fiance, Clara, Solvei falls romantically in love with him--knowing that he is engaged and she is probably emotionally unhealthy for him, she distances herself. After Zander tries to commit suicide, Solvei blames herself and is fearful that Zander will be upset with her that she saved him. In many ways, their personalities and goals are contradictory; Zander is very stoic, formal, and collected, while Solvei is none of those things. She is fairly extroverted and spontaneous while he is very introverted and studious(resembles this trope). Zander has a very strong work ethic and submits to more cultural norms than Solvei does, and they disagree on many lifestyle choices; for instance, the desire to have children. However, both of them can be very skeptical, stubborn, and goal-oriented. Zander is very aware of Solvei's mental health struggles and takes many steps to ensure that she is well taken care of by the medical system. They are very committed to each other--although their relationship admittedly has shades of codependency--and believe that staying together is the only long-term option that makes sense for both of them. They are each other's Living Emotional Crutch. Damien Solvei's relationship with Damien, her oldest son, is somewhat complicated--when he was conceived, she had no intentions or desire to become a mother but decided to go along with it anyway for Zander's sake. Throughout her pregnancy she developed a manic delusion that Damien is a "star", in both a literal and metaphorical way. Although she realizes that this is a delusion at some point when Damien is a toddler, she stands by the metaphor and continues to refer to him as such. Because her fundamental idea of him is so closely related to the mindset she had when she was mentally unstable, the manic ideas she has during an episode frequently involve him. Contact with him during a manic episode has been shown to negatively affect her mental state and disjoint her in reality. During his infancy, Solvei's maternal instincts are severely delayed: she sleeps through his cries and becomes overwhelmed and baffled when she is required to care for him on her own. Because she views him as a sublime celestial being, she doesn't understand why he would need her to care for or express affection towards him; this pattern causes Damien to develop an avoidant attachment style, which goes on to affect many of his relationships later in life. Solvei realizes this when he is an adult and she sees him struggling to connect with others, and blames herself for not treating him like a child when it was appropriate. Though she certainly cares about him a great deal and adores him, Solvei continues to be unsure about how to parent Damien. However, their skepticism and attitude of superiority allows them to have a close relationship, and as Damien grows into adolescence Solvei treats him more and more like a peer of her own age rather than her child. He is privy to some of the symptoms of her bipolar disorder: he has seen her manic several times, in part because she often seeks him out when she is: during his childhood, she would frequently take him out of bed and bring him outside to show him the stars. Therefore Damien somewhat becomes aware of Solvei's mental illness, but it doesn't fully acknowledge/realize what has been going on until he learns about bipolar disorder and the 72-hour mental health hold in a college course. When Damien comes out as homosexual at the age of ~14, Solvei is casually supportive and encourages Damien to be promiscuous and socialize more. She often supplies him with cigarettes and alcohol throughout his teenage years. Solvei wrote letters to Damien starting before he was born: many or even most of them are written during a manic/compromised mental state and she rarely uses his name. In these letters, she discloses almost everything about her and Zander's past as well as current observations. When Damien discovers these letters, it prompts him to leave for college without telling his parents as he feels like they have been concealing things from him. By this time Solvei has written almost 1,500 letters, and Damien takes all of them when he leaves and reads through most of them while away from home, thereby learning many of the things about his family that he was never told directly. Though Solvei remains in contact with Damien for several months after he leaves, she soon joins the rest of the family and cuts contact with him while he is in New York. When Damien returns to Chicago after graduating, Solvei--while she herself does not feel the kind of personal betrayal that Ignatius, Shane, and Zander did when Damien left town--explains to him that his disappearance had a severe effect on his relationships and it will take a lot of work to repair them. When Damien is hospitalized in 1976, Solvei is uncertain how to feel; she has to face the fact that Damien is just as vulnerable as anyone else, and not as distressed by the incident as Zander is, though she stays many days and nights at the hospital and argues with the doctors to assure that he is getting the correct treatment. She struggles with the decision to give consent for Damien's left leg to be amputated. When he temporarily has unresponsive pupils, she is terrified that he will become blind as a result of the incident. After he is released, she visits him many times at home while he is in recovery: after these events, her relationship becomes a little bit more parental. Ignatius Solvei has a much more typical parent-child relationship with Ignatius. She thinks of him as mostly "her kid" while she considers Damien to be mostly Zander's--this is partly because she intentionally made efforts to conceive him, while her first pregnancy was accidental. When Ignatius is an infant, Solvei has an episode of postpartum depression after discovering that he is deaf(and is paranoid that he is also blind). However, she comes to accept this and develops a secure attachment with him. After Ignatius' surgery when he temporarily shows a more somber disposition, Solvei is anxious that the unpleasant event has ruined his good-naturedness. He recovers, however, and she and Zander continue to be baffled by Ignatius' carefree and outgoing attitude. Solvei admits that Ignatius made her more maternal, and focuses almost all of her parental energy on him. She is impressed and almost envious of his tenderheartedness and emotional sensitivity, though sometimes she finds it difficult to empathize with his emotional reactions and open-mindedness. In many ways, Ignatius is Solvei's Morality Pet: when she (albeit rarely) feels guilt or shame about her violent and immoral actions as a part of gang, it is because she knows how disappointed and horrified Ignatius would be if he knew. (Later, when Ignatius becomes somewhat involved in drug production for gang, he is under the impression that his parents are simply drug dealers.) She tries to hide her mental illness from him as well, afraid that her outbursts will negatively affect him and make him fearful of her; for this reason, she is sometimes grateful that he is unable to hear her when she is in a compromised mental state. Even throughout his adulthood, Solvei is frequently anxious or worried that some severe harm will befall Ignatius: she has an irrational fear (and feels similarly about Zander) that he is fated to die before her and often writes imaginary eulogies for him. Xion Solvei has known Xion since he was a baby. As a kid she felt very possessive over him and had a tendency to be controlling, which was exacerbated when she learned that Zander was also close friends with Xion, in part because they lived across the hall from each other. Later, when Solvei and Zander become friends, Xion was also frequently nearby. Both of them have a protective/older siblingish relationship with Xion. When Xion is kidnapped and subsequently injured, Solvei is extremely guilty. He ends up having the longest recovery time after this incident, and it takes almost a year before he is able to walk again. Xion is the witness when Solvei and Zander get married, and later when they start the gang they make sure to consult with him. Though he is hesitant, he agrees to be involved; by that time, he is in med school and becomes the go-to doctor/medical consultant for all gang-related matters. Marice Solvei believes that Marice would be her de-facto best friend if not for Zander. They have known each other their whole lives; their mothers have been best friends since adolescence. She confides in Marice on some matters, but because of Marice's tendency to be somewhat judgmental, Solvei mostly relies on Zander for that. Solvei spends a lot of time with Marice in the intervening years when Zander is in college/engaged: they go out to bars and clubs and experiment with drugs, although the fact that this continuously triggers manic behavior in Solvei results in Marice distancing herself somewhat. During this time period she frequently deals with the consequences of Solvei's manic episodes, such as coming to pick her up when she wakes up in an unknown location. Marice is baffled and apprehensive when Solvei makes the decision to have kids--in part because she has never understood what Solvei sees in Zander--although she later becomes close with both Damien and Ignatius. She is one of the core members in the early years of gang. Jake Solvei and Jake have a very competitive relationship with one another--they both tend to adopt leadership roles which leads to conflict between them. They often find ways to ridicule and annoy each other. They find each other objectively attractive which has lead to tension. He is one of the core members in the early years of gang. Shane When Solvei first meets Shane, his temperament takes her by surprise; he is the first boyfriend of Damien that he introduces to his family, and Solvei and Zander both didn't expect Shane to be so extroverted. Solvei and Shane quickly become friendly with one another. Their personalities have many similarities: both have a lack of long-term planning skills and are the more outgoing of their partners. Rey & Matilda Solvei's relationship with her parents is complicated--for much for her childhood and adolescence she felt betrayed and lied to by them and believes that they blame her for Arrow's death; however, she later realized that she is and was always loved and that they in fact blame themselves for what happened to her. She is closer to Rey, partly because their personalities are similar in many ways. During Solvei's adolescence when her mental illness first began to surface, Rey was the one who mainly cared for her during her manic or depressive episodes. He tended to Solvei's burn wounds after they occurred. When Solvei and Zander are hospitalized, he drives Solvei back to the crime scene in the middle of the night (while she still believes Zander to be dead) so that she can retrieve the ring that Zander was wearing at the time of the incident. Solvei's relationship with Matilda is more distanced. Because Blythe was very close to Matilda, Solvei felt replaced as her mother's child. When Solvei later learns that Matilda has had two miscarriages, Solvei feels guilty that she had to be the only child of Matilda's that survived. Matilda rarely visits Solvei when she is hospitalized--it is only much later that Solvei realized that this is because her mother could not bear to see her child hurt, and this avoidance was not out of anger or apathy. When Solvei discovers Zander after his suicide attempt, she calls Matilda because she knows that Matilda can handle crises well. Matilda drives Solvei to the hospital where Zander is committed and assures her that Zander will live. Later, when Solvei decides to have her first child, Matilda confided her apprehension at the idea to Zander, at one point asking him why he would want to raise a child with someone manic and psychotic. After Ignatius is born, Matilda apologizes to Solvei for everything that happened to her and the fact that she and Rey did not recognize her mental illness sooner. 'Trivia' *Solvei is semi-fluent in Spanish though she rarely uses it in everyday life, besides occasional swearing *She chose the middle names of her children, while Zander chose their first names *She considers Zander to be her first sexual partner, though because of many scenarios in which she was manic/blackout drunk, this may or may not be true *She is bisexual; she could be considered a 2 on the Kinsey scale Category:Characters